Trail Running at Blaen Bran Community Woodland

The Blaen Bran Community Woodland is a little gem of a woodland that I have passed many times but I've never stopped to take a look around.

I had planned on doing a 11 or 12 mile road run in preparation for the Port Talbot half marathon, but I got out of bed late that Sunday morning and I didn't have the time then to be out for a couple of hours, so I had the idea of trying out this trail.

The woodland does have its own small car park, and it was almost full when I arrived but there is ample parking only a very short distance down the road.

I put on my Hoka ATR trail shoes and made my way through the gate onto a hard packed, gravelly uphill path which took me to the remains of a building and a junction in the path. At the turn of the 20th century there had been a coal mine on this site and also clay was excavated for the brick works at the bottom of the hill. I decided to take the path to the left, thinking that this would take me up the left hand side of the woodland.

The climb up the path wasn't too steep, but it was steep enough to get my heart rate up and beads of sweat forming on my brow. About half way up I came to a small, man made water reservoir, which was about half full, or half empty, whichever way you want to look at it, and I continued up the hill.

There was a gate at the top of the hill by the boundary fence, which I went through and turned right. This took me on another climb along a rough, stony path which was difficult to run along. The path leveled out and I recognised where I was and continued to follow the path. This brought me to a junction in the path which I knew would take me to the Mountain Air car park if I went left, so I turned right knowing that this would take me back into the woodland.

There are lots of paths and lots of junctions, so I would just choose a junction, preferring one that had an incline and I ran here and there until I'd been out for an hour or so. At one stage I ended up in what looked like an overgrown orchard where the public path was overgrown and obviously little used. I gave up trying to find a path through here and so I doubled back on myself and headed back to the car park. However I had lost my bearings somewhat and so I ended up using the "back to start" feature on my GPS Polar M430 watch which showed me the direction I needed to run to head back to my starting position, which was only 0.32 of a mile away.

I have to say that this was a very enjoyable run, only a fifteen minute drive from home, with different ground surfaces to run along, uphills, downhills and level running. I could easily run two laps of the perimeter for about 8 miles. From the top of the woodland there is a rough path which would take me to the top of the hill behind where, if one was so inclined, one could run all the way to the old bronze age fort at the top of Twmbarlwm and back, which I estimate would be a good 13 miles. I will definitely be running here again.